Product Design

Product design process

Six Phases of Generic product development
process
Phase 0: Planning

It precedes the project approval and the launch of the

actual product development process.
• Project mission statement
• Business goals
• Target market
• Constraints
• Assumption
 Product Design Process
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Phase 1: Concept Development

 Needs of the target market are identified

 Alternative product concepts are generated and one
or more selected for further testing
 A concept is a description of the form, function and
features of a product accompanied by a set of
specifications, an analysis of competitive products
and an economic justification of the project.
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Phase 2: System –level Design

 Definition of product architecture and decomposition

of the product into subsystems and components
 Final assembly scheme for the production system is
defined.
 The output of this phase usually includes a
 Geometric layout of the product
 A functional specification of each of the product’s
subsystems
 A preliminary process flow diagram
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Phase 3: Design Detail

 Complete Specification of the geometry,

materials and tolerances of unique parts
 Identification of standard parts to be
purchased from suppliers
 A process plan is established and tooling is
designed for each part
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Phase 4: Testing and Refinement

 Construction and evaluation of multiple

preproduction versions of the product
 Early prototypes are build (using the same geometry
and material as production version, but not the
actual processes to be used in production)
 Prototypes are tested to determine if it works as
designed and satisfies customer needs
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Phase 5: Production ramp-up
• Product is made using the intended
production system
• Purpose is to train work force and solve
problems if any in the production process
• Product is supplied to preferred customers for
pretesting.
• The transition from Production ramp-up to
Ongoing Process happens gradually
• The product is launched and made available
for widespread distribution
 Product Strategies
• Custom products
• Highly Standardized products
• Mixed strategies
 Types of Products
• Generic product(Market Pull)
• Technology Push products
• Platform Products
• Process Intensive products
• Customized Products
• High Risk Products
• Quick Build products
• Complex products
 Market Pull products
 The term ‘Market Pull’, refers to the
need/requirement for a new product or a
solution to a problem, which comes from the
market place.
 The need is identified by potential customers
or market research.
 Market pull sometimes starts with potential
customers asking for improvements to
existing products.
Example: Sporting goods, furniture
 Technology Push Product
 Technology Push is when research and
development in new technology, drives the
development of new products.
 Technology Push usually does not involve
market research.
 It tends to start with a company developing
an innovative technology and applying it to a
product. The company then markets the
product.
 Example: Walkman, Touch screen technology
 Platform Product
• A platform product is built around a preexisting technological
subsystem
• A set of common elements like underlying technical components,
parts or technology that are shared across a range of the company’s
products.

Advantages of a product platform:

• a. Increased speed in developing new products
• b. Manufacturing can be flexibly adjusted to create new products
• c. Reduced development costs
• d. Ability to upgrade products easily
• e. Reduce testing on new products as common components are
used
Example: Computer electronics, printers
 Process Intensive Products
• Characteristics of the product are highly constrained
by the production process, so that the product
design cannot be separated from the production
design phase even at the concept phase.
• In many cases, process intensive products are
produced at very high volumes and in bulk , rather
than discrete goods,

Example: food, chemicals, paper,

semiconductors
 Customized Products
• Customized products are slight variations of
existing/standard configurations, developed
in response to specific order by the customer.
• Developing these products consist of setting
values of design variables like physical
dimensions and materials

Example: fabric printing, switches, motors,

batteries
 High Risk Products
• High risk products entails unusually large
uncertainties related to technology or market
• The generic product development process is
modified to face high risk situations in early
phase of product development.
• Testing activities happen as early as Possible

Example :Pharmaceuticals, space systems

 Quick Build Products
• Building and testing prototype models is a rapid process
so that the design-build-test cycle can be repeated
many times.
• The system level design(phase 2) entails decomposition
of the product into high, medium and low priority
features.
• The advantage of rapid iteration is to achieve a more
flexible and responsive product development
process(spiral product development process).

Example: Software, Cellular phones

 Complex systems
• System must be decomposed into various
subsystems and these are decomposed further
into components.
• These components/subsystems are developed
by many teams working in parallel.(concurrent
engineering)
• It is followed by system integration and
validation

Example: Airplanes, jet engines

 Designing for customer
• Concurrent engineering
• Quality Function Deployment
• House of Quality
 Concurrent Engineering
• CE can be defined as the simultaneous
development of project design functions with
open and interactive communication existing
among all team members for purpose of
reducing time to market, decreasing cost and
improving quality and reliability
 Product Design Criteria
• Designing for the Customer
– Quality Function Deployment(QFD): A process that
helps a company to determine the product
characteristics important to the consumer and to
evaluate its own product in relation to others
– Value Analysis/ Value Engineering: Value Analysis is
defined as analysis with a purpose of simplifying
products and processes by achieving equivalent or
better performance at lower cost
• Designing for manufacture and assembly
• Designing for Environment/Eco-design
 Quality Function Deployment
• QFD uses a series of matrix diagrams that
resemble connected houses
• Customer requirements are defined by market
research
• These are weighted based on their relative
importance to the customer
• Customer is asked to compare and rate
company’s and competitors products.
• Product characteristics that require improvement
are identified
• Next a set of technical characteristics of the
product is developed
 QFD
• Interfunctional teams from marketing, design
engineering and marketing
• Voice of customer
• House of Quality
 House of Quality
5

Importance
Trade-off matrix

3
Design
characteristics

1 4 2

Customer Relationship Competitive

requirements matrix assessment

6 Target values
 Value Analysis (VA)-Improves
productivity
Objective is to simplify products and processes
Eliminate unnecessary features and functions
Used by multifunctional design teams
Define essential functions of an item
Determine the value of the functions
Determine the cost of providing the functions
Compute Value/Cost ratio
Design team works to increase the ratio
 Design for Manufacturing and
Assembly
Designing a product so that it can be produced
and assembled easily and economically

– Simplification
• reducing number of parts, subassemblies,
or options in a product
• Avoid tools, separate fasteners and
adjustments
• Design for ease of assembly, minimal
handling and proper presentation
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– Standardization
• using commonly available and
interchangeable parts
• Using repeatable, well understood process

– Modular Design
• combining standardized building blocks, or
modules, to create unique finished products

– Allow for efficient and adequate testing and

replacement of parts
Design for Environment
 Measuring Product Development
Three Performance dimensions
1] Time to Market
– Frequency of new introductions
– Time taken from initial concepts to market
introduction
– Number started and number completed
– Actual Vs Plan
– Percentage of sales coming from new
products
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2] Productivity
– No of engineering /manufacturing hours
– The cost of materials
– Tooling cost
– Actual Vs Planned cost
3]Quality
– Conformance Quality: The degree to which the
product or service design specifications are
met(reliability of the product)
– Design Quality: The product performance features
compared to customer expectations. Inherent value of
the product in the market place
– Defects per million opportunities(DPMO): A metric
used to measure variability of a process